Hold on children. It’s time to go explore the Collectors Nook. Next door to the also eccentrically houred Pure Clothing on I Street, this nearly invisible dusty shelved second hand is, at the very least, worth the trip around the corner from your French press at Satellite Coffee. 



Perceptively named, the Nook caters to the kinds of treasures your friends will notice, envy, and fondle on your windowsills and in your bookcases.



Each vintage broach has a story, and every owl figurine will disappear.



The front room of this eclectic shop is a crowded isle with stamps on one side and jewelry cases on the other. I had to move the stamp collection identification books in order to see the necklaces and pins inside the cases, but it was worth it. 



Inside were some of the most ridiculously low priced vintage costume jewelry I have come across in this city, and if you’re interested there are a lot of vintage costume jewelry cases on antique row. After slowly getting the owner, Don, to warm up to me and after shouting my name at him a few times, I was able to pick out a few pieces of jewelry to purchase. I set them aside and asked him about the dark room through a doorway into the back. 



“Oh, that,” he said hoarsely, and walked into the darkness, putting a hanky up to his mouth. I half expected to smell something foul as I followed him into the murky room, but when he turned on the light it was just full of books. Books and books, and books. Probably every issue of National Geographic that has ever been printed is in that room. Life magazines, science fiction journals, old children’s books, old political journals and quarterlies and periodicals and (whoa!) songs and tablature from the ‘50s and ‘60s. 



Everything is sort of stacked haphazardly and just asking to be fingered through. Two or three floor-to-ceiling shelves are devoted to a stunning and comprehensive collection of science fiction up to the late ’80s. This store is truly baffling; it’s like something your packrat grandpa’s brother would assemble in his basement. 



At the end of my surface exploration I had three necklaces, a broach of E.T. phone home sparkle touch, six pins (including one that says, “CAGE THE EAGLES!” in big red letters), six paperback science fiction journals, and three post cards from the last century. Don looked at my pile and sort of did some mumbled math in his head, looked up at me and said, “Just Twelve.”  I gave him $15 and felt I was making out like a bandit.



[Collectors Nook, 1:15-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, 213 N. I St., Tacoma, 253.272.9828]